Artists in the Photo League, active from 1936 to 1951, were known for capturing sharply revealing, compelling moments from everyday life. Their focus centered on New York City and its vibrant streets—a newsboy at work, a brass band on a bustling corner, a crowded beach at Coney Island. Though beautiful, the images harbor strong social commentary on issues of class, child labor, and opportunity. The Radical Camera explores the fascinating blend of aesthetics and social activism at the heart of the Photo League, tracing the group's left-leaning roots and idealism to the worker-photography movement in Europe. Influenced by mentors Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, and Paul Strand, artists in the Photo League worked within a unique complex comprising a school, a darkroom, a gallery, and a salon, in which photography was discussed as both a means for social change and an art form. The influence of the Photo League artists on modern photography was enormous, ushering in the New York School.
Presenting 150 works of the members of the Photo League alongside complementary essays that offer new interpretations of the League's work, ideas, and pedagogy, this beautifully illustrated book features artists including Margaret Bourke-White, Sid Grossman, Morris Engel, Lisette Model, Ruth Orkin, Walter Rosenblum, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, and Weegee, among many others.
Janet Delaney has always been drawn to the ways work shapes people’s lives, families, and communities. In her latest book, she turns her lens closer to home, retracing a week she spent in 1980 with her father, a beauty salesman on the verge of retirement. What began as a daughter’s curiosity became a vivid portrait of long days on the road, endless conversations, and the quiet determination behind a lifetime of providing for others.
Through humor, candor, and empathy, Delaney’s photographs reveal not just the hustle of a salesman, but also the love that fueled it. To learn more about this project and her reflections on it, we asked her a few questions.
Blood Bonds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda is a new photobook by photographer Jan Banning and journalist Dick Wittenberg, with an essay on forgiveness by philosopher Marjan Slob. It addresses the genocide in Rwanda, the reconciliation programs that followed, and presents 18 joint portraits of survivors and perpetrators.
I first encountered a few of Coreen Simpson’s images without realizing it was her work, and receiving Coreen Simpson: A Monograph was a revelation. This book, the second volume in Aperture’s Vision & Justice series, offers an in-depth look at the career of a photographer and jewelry designer whose work spans over five decades. The monograph itself is beautifully produced, with a tactile, leather-like hardcover that makes holding it feel like handling an art object.
To commemorate the legacy of one of fashion photography’s most influential figures, the Rodney Smith Estate is pleased to announce several international exhibitions, both the first retrospectives in their countries, and a new book.
We’re excited to announce the release of Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics & Practices, a groundbreaking new book by Judy Walgren and Tara Pixley that reimagines how visual journalism can—and should—be practiced today.
TBW Books is pleased to announce Blood Green, a new artist book by Curran Hatleberg, conceived as a coda to the artist’s acclaimed 2022 monograph, River’s Dream. Blood Green offers an alternate vision—less an outtake than a parallel dream, a shadow of the original, expanding on the darker themes of contemporary American life.
Daido Moriyama (b. 1938) spent his groundbreaking and illustrious career
photographing the streets of Tokyo, exploring the city’s gritty underbelly with his handheld film
camera. His black-and-white photographs—which feature subjects from train passengers to a
car on fire to aerial views of postwar Tokyo—reveal Moriyama’s dramatic documentary style as
he plays with light and shadow. Moriyama’s prolific work is marked by his sharp eye for
subjects, use of heavy contrast, and tilted images.
Between 1979 and 1989 the American photographer, David Katzenstein used a series
of Kodak Duaflex cameras, the first of which he purchased at a yard sale in 1975.
Brownie (Hirmer; September 19, 2025, $55) represents the culmination of ten years
experimenting with color photography and using the limitations of the camera as a
way to expand his creative boundaries.
In 2017 photographer Merlin Daleman embarked on a journey through the economic North of the UK. Originally from the West Midlands, Daleman has lived in the Netherlands for most of his adult life. Driven by curiosity to understand the divisions in the UK made evident in the 2016 referendum, he returned to photograph. He revisited the previously familiar with the eyes of an outsider.
